#4 Twitter Then and Now

As the usage of Twitter increases I thought it would be important to do an infograph of how Twitter has changed since the 2008 presidential election to the 2012 presidential election. We also did a Twitter project in class based on the election so I wanted to show how politics are heavily involved with it as well.

Looking at these two graphs people can easily compare the data between how many people were members of Twitter in 2008 compared to 2012 and how many people received information about politics from Twitter in 2008 and 2012. Any person who can look at this will see how much Twitter has grown. I think it is safe to say all social media companies like Facebook and even Blogspot have increased within the past couple of years. If a person were considering not joining Twitter because they think it is only a social outlet and not informational, they can look at my infograph and see how many people are using Twitter to gather information that is relevant to the every day news. This infograph is simple and easy to read and any person wanting to get a little background of how social media is increasing will be able to look at this and obtain a little information they might be looking for.

#3 Facebook for Adults

The audio piece I did is about my journey with Facebook as I ran for student class president in High School. Social media, as I said in other posts, is increasing very rapidly. Not only do young adults use social media pages like Facebook but many older adults are becoming more involved with it also.

By explaining how Facebook helped me with a class election, I think older adults can listen to it and understand how fast a message can travel through such a large media source. During the 2012, Obama and Romney had Facebook pages promoting their views which other people were allowed to "like" or "comment" on. Older people may not be as familiar with Facebook as younger adults but circulating the information about the election and candidates allowed for older individuals to look at a page and understand why posting something on Facebook is a lot more effective in getting a message across than listening to an annoying ad on television. It is important for everyone to become familiarized with social media as a whole because it allows for many issues to bring up good conversation with anyone who is interested in that topic from anywhere in the nation.

#2 Why We Vote

Why We Vote

“Why do you support the candidate you support?”

Students wait in line to vote at the Ohio Union.

“Because Obama is awesome, and Romney sucks.”

(Left)

Three members of the Obama campaign encourage people on High Street to vote.

“President Obama doubled funding for Pell Grants.  I’m going to school on a Pell Grant, and I think it’s important that everyone have the opportunity to get an education.”

(2^nd Photo Middle)

Sidewalk chalk urges students to vote early and Democratic on the Oval.

“I support Obama because Obama supports me as a woman, as a student, and as a member of the middle class.”

(2^nd Photo Right)

Campaign paraphernalia at the Obama-Biden tent, a permanent presence on the Oval for the majority of the semester this fall.

“I would say ultimately just equality.  I’m a social worker, so I tend to lean a direction.”

An Ohio voter poses with his "I heart voting" sticker in front of Mirror Lake Creamery.

“Because he has a big importance, and he really cares about what I care about, which is women’s rights and healthcare.  I’m really big on healthcare, because that’s what I’m going into.”

(Right)

Students in Thompson Library supporting their right to vote over lunch.

“He is one that I can get something out of.  I understand what he’s saying and where he’s going, and I believe that he will provide the best future for me.”

(6^th Photo Left)

A pamphlet endorsing President Obama lies abandoned on the Oval.

“I support President Obama because, overall, it seems like he’s fighting for the common man, and that ideology is very similar to what I stand for.”

A student staffs the Obama-Biden tent on the Oval.

“I believe that everyone should have an equal opportunity to do what they want in their life, no matter what their background or ethnicity or gender, that they should just be equal and have a chance to succeed.”

A member of the Obama campaign works in the Obama campaign headquarters in South Campus Gateway.

“I believe that women are equal to men and should be treated that way…I think that all color should be equal, and I don’t think that it’s fair that a lot of the presidential goals of Mitt Romney kind of are geared away from that.  Yeah, I believe in equality, you know?  Love!”

(Left)

Two students and members of the Obama campaign advocate voting on the Oval.

“As a Democrat, the whole point is that we fight for people who don’t have a voice, so honestly that includes, in this election, women, who…should have just the same rights, just the same pay as any man, and I don’t think that Romney genuinely believes that.  So as a young woman and as a college student, I think that Obama best represents what I hope to be represented for in a politician.”

(10^th Photo Right)

A flyer advertises buses to early voting locations on Neil Avenue.

“I don’t think [Barack Obama] supports the values that were set forth for this nation, and I think Mitt Romney is better supporting of those values…I think he has a plan that will move us forward and get our nation in a spot where we need to be to succeed on a global level.”

A student shows off her Romney-Ryan t-shirt on her way into the Ohio Union.

Campaign posters advocate Obama and Romney in a window of The Residence on Tenth.

After making a few edits to this photo essay, I think this is a good example of how much college students really get involved in politics. Only having a couple of hours to go around Ohio State University, a few of my classmates and I found really good images, flyers, and people that were engaged in this past election.

I think this photo essay can give other students around any college campus ideas of how to get more involved when it comes to politics and petitioning in general. From looking at the photos and reading how educated some of the students answered our to question of "why do you support the candidate you do?" another student will be able to get more knowledge of what other people think and ways of expressing themselves and their views. Some students wear t-shirts or buttons or even put stickers in their windows and I think this is important to show young adults that is it important to expressive your views and they should not be afraid of doing so.

#1 I am proud to be a voter!

This infograph is mainly focused on getting the attention of young new voters. The 2012 election was my first presidential election I was able to vote in. I kept hearing "you're vote matters" or "every vote counts" so I wanted to know how many young people really did vote.

In this infograph young, new voters are able to see how many people around their ages are actually voting and how important their vote really is. They are able to get information in a simple form by just reading a few lines because college students and young adults tend to skim a lot through information but this is a way they can look at something and know the straight facts about a topic which is so important.

rough draft of final

This is a rough draft of my final project. I am showing how Twitter has changed from the 2008 election to the 2012 election. I am not completely done but I am going to make it more presentable with colors and finish the graphs. I thought this went along with our theme of the class well because we did a Twitter project about the election so I am showing how popular it has become in the last four years.

Mini Video

For this project I wanted to direct my focus of the video to college students. Everyone says the young people are very important in this election and I agree. College students should be becoming familiar with what is going on in this election and they should want to vote.

This election has been filled with overwhelming issues that most of us do not understand or really do not affect us directly. The biggest issue though that I felt does affect us as college students is the issue about jobs and the unemployment status for college graduates. I found this to be a big issue because ultimately we all will graduate soon and I'm sure all of us want a job when we graduate. I tried to make it as simple as possible because I know students wouldn't really want to hear a bunch of numbers and statistics like they have been over the past few months. I compared the percentages to make it clear to students what I was trying to get across so they could think for themselves how they could be affected when they graduate.

This video is just to educate current students about how the unemployment rate has increased in the last four years and to try to persuade people to vote a certain way. This is the last day to vote but knowing this information could affect someone in their last minute vote.

Show and Tell Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHc_fXtsj0

This link is the video example for our mini-lesson assignment.

This video is educating the views about what has happened with our economy on many different issues. It is giving them statistics about job rates or unemployment rates from the last couple of years. It says the numbers but also shows the numbers which helps the viewers get a better understanding I think.

I think it is a good example for our class on this assignment because it has many voice overs from different people which shows that the topic is being talked about by more than one person, which makes it seem important. It does not use different location, it just focus on the boy riding his bike, but I think the different voice overs can represent the different locations in a non literal sense.

The video I think is kind of creepy but the message it is trying to get across is to vote because the viewers wouldn't want their children or their lives to be lifeless like the video scene was. It is saying we can make a difference and change all the statistics stated in the video around so it is important to vote.

Weekend Twitter

Twitter is something that I have had for a couple years now. I don't tweet too much but I think before this assignment I tweeted a decent amount. After doing this assignment I learned quite a bit more about politics. I never really was that involved in politics but I'm glad we had this assignment to get me more involved.

My favorite part of this Twitter experience was to see how people would reply to my political tweets. I tried to stay unbiased because I didn't want to start any trouble through Twitter. Some people will bash other people, just like cyber bullies do, and I didn't want to involve that in this assignment. Some people responded to the voting tweet I made about only having one day. They wanted to know if they could vote online and that was important because I think people should get out and vote. it is our job as citizens to do that and I'm glad people asked how they could do it. What I didn't like about this assignment was that I felt it was hard for me to tweet in reply to a politicians tweet. I thought this was hard only because I do have so little knowledge about some of the tweets they were talking about so I felt out of place on that part.

Twitter allows you to get a point across in a clever way. On Facebook you can put as many words as you need to but on Twitter you are limited so it has to be clever and short. It's a fast way for people to read and get information without spending however long reading a long post where half the information does not even matter. I only engaged in a few political conversations this past weekend but that was important because it taught me more each tweet I read.

I think after this weekend I will still follow a few of the politicians I started following on Thursday because they did inform me on good information I think everyone should know. I still think Twitter is a clever use of social media and it keeps me up to date on many issues. I also like to read people's tweet about their views on things to see how it compares to mine. This assignment actually helped me in one of my other classes because I got to see how many posts were about false claims of the other candidates. That is the topic of my other class and so I used many tweets as examples for that class. I liked doing this Twitter assignment and it made me like Twitter that much more!

Infographic elements

The elements I used to make my infographic were a picture of Obama's head and a picture of Romney's head. In between those two I used another picture of just the word vote. Those pictures did not have any copyrights on them, that is why I used them. I put the layers together by first putting the pictures on different layers, the each of the text lines were a different layer also. I then went back and put the color on the texts and used shadowing and outlining for them.
I got my information from different sites to use for my texts...
http://www.civicyouth.org/PopUps/FactSheets/FS_08_exit_polls.pdf
http://www.civicyouth.org/quick-facts/youth-voting/
http://www.yda.org/resources/youth-vote-statistics/

My Infographic

When I started making this infographic I wanted to do something similar to the example that I had. I wanted to make it unbiased so I decided to do make infographic all about voting. I focused on our age groups, which are preferred to as the "young people." I found statistics and went off of those to inform the "young people" why it is important to vote. I keep hearing "this election is an important one" or "people need to get out and vote for this 2012 election" so I focused on that.

From the reading we did in an earlier class, "Picturing Texts" I think my infographic describes his use of "emphasis" the most. I tried to make the word VOTE the largest so people understood that is the point I was  trying to make. I want to direct people attention to that and to understand it is for the 2012 election I incorporated Obama's and Romney's faces right by the word vote. I also think my infographic shows a good use of "proportion." I split up each line of the texts from left to right so it didn't look to crowded or sloppy. I also decided to make each line a different size then the one below it. If you follow from top to bottom it starts out large and becomes smaller right in the center then back to large. I put the text in order from which I thought was most important.

It was fairly easy putting the pictures and the words into my infographic. the hardest part of the assignment was trying to align the text the way I wanted to, to make it look the most organized. Also I had trouble remembering how to make the words look fancy and use shadowing and other effects, but  with help from my classmates I was refreshed on how to do it.

I learned that visual design can do a lot to get a big point across. The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" i think is very true. A small picture can get an important message across if the design is right and it catches people's eyes. I did not want to use too many different colors but just a pattern of ideas to make my infographic visually appealing and easy to understand. I think I accomplished that for the most part.

Election Infographic

This infographic I think represents some of Faigley's terms she described. First I think she is classifying many of the election topics that are discussed the most in this election. The picture separates them in their own circle, but they overlap each other because some are more common then the ones in the back.

 I also think this is a good example of emphasis because right in the center of this picture is the Tax Reform circle. Taxes have been discussed and mentioned a lot throughout this campaign and that being the big circle in the middle with nothing covering it shows that it is important and the emphasis is put on that topic. You also see the votes VOTE a couple of times around the picture so you can say that voting is another emphasis put on this picture because it appears the most.

Fair Use

Reading the comic "Bound by Law" made me understand the whole copyright idea better but it confused me with the fair use idea. I really did not know that even a little 4.5 second of a clip in a movie could be such a big deal and cause many problems. It's kind of unclear when you use fair use and what kind of material or images have to be credited for. If I were to make a movie I wouldn't clearly understand what I could and could not use in it that wasn't mine to begin with.

Rhetoric presidential campaign example

This picture is a good example of the readings we did in class. It is a picture of Paul Ryan standing infront of a podium with the words "PROTECT & STRENGTHEN MEDICARE."
The common place in the picture would be the word medicare. People all throughout this election keep hearing the word medicare and the candidates spend a lot of time in ads to explain why this is so important. Many people can relate to the word and it is something the audience holds in common. Protect and strengthen would be bonding people together because those are positive words that people in the audience value. Those would examples of identity strategies.